0337 Napoli come "Weltlandschaft"

Modelli mediatici e paragone intermediale nella veduta di Napoli disegnata da Jan van Stinemolen

Abstract

Stinemolen's panorama of Naples reverses the traditional representation model by showing the city as seen from the countryside. It stages a view of the city, the sea, and the horizon framed by repoussoirs. This article identifies the Dutch Weltlandschaft ("world landscape") and the inventions of the Danube school, particularly the paintings and prints of Albrecht Altdorfer, as the medial preconditions for this novel image creation, which also exhibits affinities with contemporary literary preconceptions of the view of the city, as documented in Giovanni Tarcagnota's Del sito, et lodi della città di Napoli (1566). The unusual ambition of Stinemolen's panorama of Naples can be better understood when compared with Anton van den Wyngaerde's drawing of Naples and his series of depictions of Spanish cities commissioned by Philip II, which were probably created as templates for a printed city atlas. Stinemolen and his patron may have been planning a large-format print similar to Wyngaerde's engraving of Genoa. Regardless of this presumed practical function, Stinemolen attempts to emulate the atmospheric effects of landscape painting in the medium of drawing without abandoning the claim to topographical precision and accurate representation of individual buildings. The conflicting demands of cartographic and landscape representation thus appear to be dialectically absorbed in the virtuosity of the drawing. The result is the creation of a larger-than-life visual experience that offers a view of the city impossible to capture from any specific, actual location on Naples's periphery.